TDN Access

#1 I always thought it was silly, the information they try to keep protected never is actually good enough (in detail) for some JOE off the street to steal. Of course keeping control over the information DO keep the engine in the hands of the people that paid for it.
I was a little pissed that i only got a small amount of info about Torque BEFORE i invested cash into it. But in hindsight its not alot of cash, and no matter what becomes of my using Torque i have learned a heck of a alot. So i always figured its not a big deal for me to research information other non licensed team members may seek. I also figure anyone that truly is wanting to get into game design, SHOULD have a license and should study it like a religion, even if they are only doing game art.
(Of course why not open the art content creation DOC's to the public? It is one of the more time consuming aspects of the LEANING CURVE of Torque.)

#2 You forget that in a good team you don't have a whole team of people doing everything. You have specialists. A modeler. An Artist. A scripter. A coder. Etc.

Expecting them to all purchase the entire engine is a bit of a stretch. Especially since most of them will never look at the code itself aside from the coder. It just seems like a better structure to allow people who are a part of a company in the GG system to have access to the specific roles they have been granted. Not full reign. Just viewable rights for things like the 'For Artists' section that would help them in getting their side of things handled.

#3 Hey, I sorta agree. But as i said, ANYONE that is truly wanting to get into the 'bizz' should already HAVE the engine, and at $150 whatever its not alot of cash, i spend that much one night drinking!

I also agree that it would be nice to have some way to get DOC's into the hands of our team members that are working in that area. I have before saved TDN pages out for team members that use BLENDER, i dont use blender- i dont LIKE blender- but lots of people DO use blender, im NOT going to learn to use blender just to help other blender using team members, but i did take all of 3 minutes to download some blender doc, zip them up and mail them off. Even if i need to do that once a week, its a lot less energy then WISHING around for them to change the website to allow none licensed users to get ahold of some documentation.

What they could offer is some type of Artist license, someone that already OWNS the SDK, vouch for the artist, then the artist can get a dirt cheep license to see the GOOD doc's. They could use that money to put into getting the exporters all polished up! Its a 'win' for everybody!

#4 TDN is in closed beta. When that beta phase is complete, non-source code related TDN articles will be made available to the public.

#5 Wonderful. Thats what I was wondering about mostly. Thank you Stephen.

#6 Can someone help me figure out what I need to do to get access to the TDN? I've been told there are a number of tutorials available, starting with a "Fish Demo", and I THINK they're somewhere in the TDN. If not, does someone know where I can find the tutorials?

#7 @Ben -

You need to have purchased a license for the are you are accessing. Otherwise you can just go to http://tdn.garagegames.com/

But again you will only have access to the areas that you have purchased rights to for now.

#8 Thanks, James. I'll look into a license to get at the tutorials. Is there a better way for a rookie?

#9 If you are looking to get into developing with Torque then the only real way it to get an indie license and start working on it. Is Torque the end all, be all of what is out there. Absolutely not. However I do believe that if your goal is desktop PC game oriented then Torque is an good way to go. Just understand that there is a learning curve to the engine. Don't expect to have never used it before and have a game out in a couple months. You'll spend at least that getting familiar with Torquescript and thats before you ever touch the sourcecode.

#10 Well I'm not unrealistic about my expectations, which is why I'm asking before buying. The license isn't much money, but I'd rather pay more for the best path than less for a dead end. Not that the Torque Engine is a dead end, but their tutorials might not be as useful as other resources. But again, at their price, it's not a stumbling block.

#11 I will say this. The documentation is heavily in the Beta-Stage. That is why you have to have already purchased the engine to access it. Then plan on opening the non-code related parts of TDN once they have left the beta stage. while there is a lot of information in TDN, a lot more help ends up coming from other developers and working on the engine itself. Especially looking through the example code in the starter FPS that it has.

#12 Yeah, I don't want to be a complete leech and ask too much of the other developers, although ultimately I'd do my best to give back more than taking. If the TDN is the best way to go for now, then I'll just have to bite the bullet.

Thanks.